


Everyone Needs a Place

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-06-04
Packaged: 2018-04-02 04:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4045711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Mount Weather, Raven is forced to spend a week in bed. Predictably enough, she lasts a day and a half.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts).



> Cella asked for a post-s2 one-shot, _Raven Reyes had a notion of what she wanted to be loved like. Wick didn't give her that. Bellamy didn't give her that; he gave her more._ I went a touch overboard with the wordcount.
> 
> Shout out for akzseinga for being my most illustrious beta-reader.
> 
> There is some Raven/Wick here, but I'm trying to be as brief as possible ;).

_Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else._  
Richard Siken, _Detail of the Woods_

After Mount Weather, Raven is forced to spend a week in bed. Predictably enough, she lasts a day and a half.

(It hurts like fuck when she sneaks out; bruised skin and torn muscles on top of the constant, dull ache of her leg. It's funny how you can get used to pain.)

Kyle intercepts her a few yards into the camp, and promptly decides she’s had enough before carrying her back to bed. A part of her wishes she could just kick him, yell, and go her own way, but she’s so exhausted she starts thinking that maybe he’s right, right to stop her and right to save her from herself. 

Even if he isn’t, she can’t escape anyway.

Kyle’s body feels nice against hers, all smooth, and large, and solid, so she focuses on that sensation before anything else, and makes herself enjoy. Raven Reyes, she reminds herself, is a creature of sensation.

***

By day four, she feels like she’s suffocating, and she’d give anything for a moment of clear thought. With nothing to distract her from it, the pain in her abused limbs grows from bad to worse, and soon it takes up all the free space in her head until she starts making sounds, and feeling very stupid about it: frowning and moaning into the walls of her tent like a character from some dumb movie. Before all this, she always thought expressions of pain were a show for the sake of others.

Octavia and Monty have the decency to check up on her, so she makes the effort of putting on a brave face she thinks is quite believable -- not too shiny and in no way overdone, but optimistic enough for everyone to leave her alone as per usual.

Clearly she fucks it up, because by the end of the day, Bellamy Blake fumbles into her tent, wielding a screwdriver like a weapon.

He has a good excuse, she has to give him that; the radio he brings is busted in such an interesting way that if she didn't know just how much faster the guys from engineering would fix it now that she's no more than a wreck of a girl, she'd totally buy it that he didn't do this only to cheer her up.

Her first instinct is to kick him out with a well-studied expression of contempt for his charity, but she's so weary she finds it a lot easier to just ignore him. She can always toss his radio away as soon as he leaves.

It doesn't really surprise her when, instead of turning back as soon as his errand is complete, Bellamy sits heavily on the ground by her cot, his back brushing lightly against her left arm. There's never been anything remotely affectionate between them except that one time, crossed out, but Raven knows need when she sees it, and it's quite clear to her what he's asking for.

It takes little to no effort to reach and ruffle his hair ever so lightly. 

"How are you holding up?" he asks without turning to face her.

"Like I'm about to kill something."

"Good."

They settle into each other slowly; Bellamy is easy in his presence and undemanding in his neediness, so Raven doesn't mind that he stays for a while. He's good at talking to people in lockup, smooth and attentive to detail, and she knows he's trying to distract her, but, whatever. At least she'll know the all the latest camp gossip.

He makes himself scarce before she can grow tired of him, and because, once upon a time, Raven Reyes used to be a person capable of accepting kindness, she asks him to drop by tomorrow.

***

When he returns, his broken radio is still exactly where he left it. There is no way he didn't notice, but he doesn't mention it even with as much as poignant silence.

It's been five days, and Raven is antsy in an annoying, petty way that keeps her from thinking sense, let alone talking it. She's mad that he showed up, and she'd be even madder if he stood her up; she wants to go for a run, or stay in bed, or talk Bellamy into a quickie. Most of all, she wants to stop being like _this_ , frightened and restless in her own skin, and so fucking childish she feels like smacking herself. 

(Finn would know what to do, she catches herself thinking; it's true and it's not true, but most of all it's sore, and Raven is done being sore.)

"Get me my brace," she barks at Bellamy, then puts it on with stiff fingers, as weak as a kitten, not that she particularly cares.

She has him help her get up and smuggle her to Monty's.

To be sure, she pulls something on the way, but injuries, she learned the hard way, hurt a lot less than healing, so it doesn't really give her a pause.

***

Apart from a battery to fix, Monty gives her something illicit for the pain, so Raven actually manages to keep her escapades under the wraps for some time, only to get spectacularly busted on day seven. When Abby shows up in her tent to see to her injuries, and finds only an empty bed, she makes such a first class ruckus that even Raven, raised by one of Mecha's most colorful hysterics, has to admit she's impressed.

Abby yells at all three of them at once, and, to Raven's unexpected delight, Bellamy doesn't look guilty at all. Whatever he hears about risks, about fragility or impending permanence of the damage, it goes directly over his head. It takes Raven a good few minutes to notice that even though she's just seen him mending clothes in the far end of the tent, he's now standing by her side, his right foot pushed slightly forward, as if he was getting ready to step in.

As soon as Abby leaves them alone, Monty shrugs and goes back to measuring some dried herbs he's been fiddling with all afternoon.

"I'm sorry I got you into trouble," says Raven just in case.

Monty shoots her a dubious look.

"You're good," he says simply. "Just don't go around doing cartwheels, okay?"

"Deal," she replies automatically, and suddenly feels her face stretch in the first smile she's felt in weeks, slight and genuine, and shockingly familiar.

After nightfall, she falls asleep exhausted, and in more pain than is technically her due, but when she wakes up in the morning, she actually feels like getting out of bed again.

***

She’s on her way to Sinclair’s, because seems like the most approachable adult at the moment, and she needs someone to talk to. She’s not an invalid, and she wants work to do -- real work, and not the impromptu tinkering her friends find for her to keep her sane. The whole engineering team is still going through whatever they brought from Mount Weather, and Raven knows she could easily join them, except she doesn’t want to go anywhere near that shit, not now and not ever. So she’s counting on Sinclair to help her figure something out.

It doesn’t even occur to her that she’s sure to run into Kyle if she goes so close to the Mecha tent until it’s too late. It turns out Kyle has been waiting for the new day to rise before he gave her shit for sneaking out, and Raven isn’t exactly sure she appreciates the delay.

When he calls out after her, his voice is like a whiplash, surrounding her with an all too familiar surge of guilt. It feels like the Ark, or almost like it; like Mecha, and workshops, and Finn.

(Exactly like Finn, or not at all like Finn, like loving hands and mocking voices, and having way too much to drink. There is, Raven finds, a lot, perhaps too much, of meaning attached to Kyle.)

“What _were_ you thinking?” he asks as he approaches her in a few long strides, and she feels her stomach tighten when she sees his face.

He loves her, and she’s a bit short of people willing to love.

It’s a short conversation, and Raven tries to make nice, but somehow everything she says comes out wrong, until she’s biting her lip in search for words, what a mess. He deserves better from her, and what’s even more important, he wants better; better than this sullen, prickly mess of a girl she’s been presenting everyone with lately.

Too bad.

“I’m fine,” she says, and like it or not, it comes out as a hiss, because apparently Raven Reyes is the kind of girl who has more affection for screwdrivers than for people.

It’s likely he tries to stop her, but she pretends not to hear as she rushes towards Sinclair’s table, trying with all her might to focus on what she was going to say.

***

Sinclair considers her for a long moment before he starts talking, and his scrutiny is enough to make her vaguely uncomfortable.

“There is _something_ ,” he says finally. “But it’s a big project. Having a Zero G do it, that’s great, but it’s not a one person job.”

(What neither of them says is: they’re the only two Zero Gs left alive, and he hasn’t even been working in the field that much for the last few years.)

The table they’re standing at is cluttered with all sorts of equipment, mostly singed, or crushed, or both, and Raven automatically reaches for a small bit of a solar panel, smashed beyond rescue, except if you salvaged the biggest piece and connected it to that bit over there…

Sinclair meets her gaze with a smile, and suddenly Raven knows what he wants her to do.

“We can’t go back to space,” he says calmly, “but we do need the tech. We need wires. Hell, we even need scrap metal. But we don’t have workers to spare, not before spring. And some more delicate parts will be useless if we leave them exposed to the elements for the whole winter. The ship is too damaged to protect them.”

“But if there are no people to spare, how… oh.”

Sinclair nods.

“There are nearly fifty of you, and they’ll listen if you talk to them. Get to work, Reyes.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Working with Sinclair, Raven learns, is backbreaking; he's as relentless as he's exhausted, and he doesn't exactly expect her to keep up, but it's her last chance, anyone's last chance, to learn something about the Ark, so it doesn't even occur to her not to.

Technically, Sinclair is supposed to be too important for this. Salvaging the Ark is Raven's pet project, useful enough to let her rope in the other teenagers with no particular assignments, but not nearly as valuable as the tech from Mount Weather; as water purification stations and medical equipment, and farming techniques that could last them for generations.

In reality, the man loves his ship like a child he's never had, and every moment he can possibly spare, he spends at the wreckage.

Working with Sinclair, Raven learns, is backbreaking; he's as relentless as he's exhausted, and he doesn't exactly expect her to keep up, but it's her last chance, anyone's last chance, to learn something about the Ark, so it doesn't even occur to her not to.

Besides, as long as she works, she doesn't think about her legs all that much.

They establish a rhythm after a short while: Sinclair spends his mornings and afternoons with the engineers while Raven works at the site, hand in hand with Nate Miller, digging for treasure among the scraps. Nate knows little about tech, but he's so attentive to detail that his clever hands more than make up for the lack. Most importantly, he knows every single one of the delinquents by name, knows their strengths and weaknesses, and somehow he always manages to push everyone not too little or too much, but just enough. If he'd been born on Alpha, Raven thinks sometimes, he would've been in government training since he was fourteen; as it is, he manages the people while she manages the tech, and they move with an impressive speed, given how the days are growing shorter and shorter.

After dark, Raven takes her best findings, and together with Monty she carries them to the workshop they're now sharing with Sinclair. Monty is no Zero G, but he knows his way around batteries, wires and rocket fuel, and that's good enough for them. With Kyle, who drops by every now and then, they make quite a team.

She sleeps with Kyle a few more times during those busy weeks, and it's nice, really; the way he touches her like she's fragile, but also unbelievably strong, capable of crushing his heart with no more than a wave of her hand.

It's really quite nice, and when she tries hard enough, even her friends sometimes forget just how broken she is.

***

Bellamy starts showing up at Sinclair's workshop around November, and most days, Raven wishes he wouldn't.

He can't exactly help them with their tasks, and it's not like he doesn't have his own work to do during the day, but he still makes time almost every evening. He must be lonely, Raven thinks, and bored to tears with his cleaning job he was forced to go back to since, unlike most of their people, he isn't actually underage. Bellamy doesn't do much in the workshop; sometimes he comes simply to eat his dinner with them and share the latest camp gossip, or to listen on when Nate drops by after his shift to talk to Raven and arrange things for the next day. 

It irks her, and she isn't even sure why.

***

Around this time, the weather takes a turn to merciless, and with it comes stiffness of muscles and joints that leaves Raven howling in bed every morning. A thought sneaks up on her that maybe, just maybe, she isn't getting any better; that there will be no more progress, only this, dull pressure of her brace on the leg that's trying to rip itself apart from inside out, until Raven Reyes is made of nothing but a sorry excuse for a limb.

When there comes a day when she's in too much pain to push through and get to work, she can't say she's too surprised.

But then Nate sticks his head into her tent a few hours later, and before Raven knows it, he's collecting her bedding and calling for someone over his shoulder, and Raven is nodding, yes, yes, even though she can't believe this is happening. Nate, her blanket in his hand, is brainstorming with Monty and Harper, and Bellamy, called away from mending the fence, has his arm around Raven's middle.

"Won't it be easier if I just carry you?" he asks even as he's helping her take a step after shaky step.

"No way in hell."

The day is a blur of activity, of parts and scraps and wires she's browsing through from the makeshift bed Nate and Harper placed as close to the Ark as they possibly could. She isn't doing her best, she knows, the pain slowing her down even as she thinks, but there's no one here who can do better, so she lets her work take up as much of her mind as it can. 

Only when it's time for her to pick up the day's bounty and move it to the workshop does she realize that, in order to stay with her all day and fetch her broken pieces of tech, Bellamy must've blown off his entire shift.

Sinclair doesn't notice them approach until they're standing right in front of him. He seems almost buried under his work, but something in Raven's face must startle him out of his trance. He only takes one look at her before he orders her to immediately go to sleep, but Raven, sore and tired all the way into irritability, finds the cheek that's been slipping away from her for weeks, and tells him to take his own freaking advice, because, really. Kettle, pot. 

When she's done talking, she closes her eyes, half-expecting a blow.

The world goes still for no more than a second, and by the time Kyle walks in, everything is in motion again: Bellamy is tidying up the tools under Raven's watchful eye while Monty is securing pieces of broken tech, and Sinclair, a clean rag in his hands, is talking to Nate in the corner of the shed.

"Change of plans?" Kyle asks even as he's grabbing his favorite screwdriver.

"Early night," replies Sinclair briefly, and Raven catches a shadow of a smile in the corner of her eye, warm and real, who'd think.

He gives her a slight pat on the shoulder before he leaves.

Since Raven's bed is still mostly by the wreckage, Kyle offers her shelter for the night, but she suddenly isn't in the mood to hear him.

She leaves the workshop with Nate.

***

It's too early to go to sleep, so Nate's dad helps them build a big fire in front of the tent before he leaves for guard duty.

Soon people start gathering around them, Octavia, and Monty, and Harper, and the rest of their people usually scattered around Camp Jaha. Bellamy shows up last, and takes a seat between his sister and Raven, intercepting the tin with moonshine on his way.

"What did Johnson say?" asks Nate with a grin, and Raven can't help smiling, too. Johnson might've been a half-decent supervisor when his job was all about mopping the floors on the Ark, but he's ridiculously bad at navigating the ground, not to mention unwilling to learn. 

"You don't want to know," says Bellamy with a shrug.

"You're the most disgraceful janitor in history?"

"Something like that, yeah."

He hangs his head ever so slightly, but there's a smile playing on his lips, and suddenly Raven wants to laugh because of how unimaginably _good_ this all feels, people, and warmth, and light, Bellamy's easy humor surrounding her like a shield.

"You should be working with us," she says impulsively, and several people around the fire nod energetically. Bellamy's face looks dubious, but before he can say anything, Octavia catches his eye.

"I told you," she says poignantly, and apparently Bellamy doesn't need her to elaborate.

"Fine, I'll ask Sinclair," he surrenders with surprise seriousness.

As soon as he's done speaking, Octavia steals his moonshine and downs it triumphantly; she's wearing a proud expression of a woman congratulating herself on a job well done. Bellamy's gravity evaporates as quickly as it appeared, and Raven finds she enjoys this: his light, teasing voice right by her ear, and his leg pressing lightly against hers as he jokes with Octavia and Nate. He's had a few shots, and it makes him gentle, as if he were slightly softer around the edges; blurry, and smooth, and at arm's reach.

Huh, maybe it's not just him who's had a few shots.

A few hours into the party, Sinclair shows up with three engineers in tow, and Raven feels a brief pang of surprise that Kyle isn't among them, but then she gets distracted by one of Monty's stories, and lets herself forget all the tensions of the day. 

Slowly but surely people start drifting back to their tents, and Raven herself feels pleasantly woozy, her bones for once filled not only with pain, but also with healthy, solid tiredness that comes after work well done. Nate offers her his dad's empty cot, so she's in no rush to go to sleep, comforted by knowledge that a bed awaits her less than five steps away; and Bellamy lingers, too, even though he has no apparent reason to stay.

When he finally gets up to leave, Raven rises automatically as if to see him off, stumbling slightly on her stiff leg.

She regains her balance immediately, and she doesn't need Bellamy to catch her, so she grows slightly irritated when he does, anyway; it doesn't register, at first, that his touch is way too light to support her weight, and that his hand moves softly against her cheek, against the logic of a fall.

His kiss goodnight is brief and chaste, no more than a brush of his lips against hers, Bellamy's definition of self-indulgence. 

Raven doesn't think about why she deepens his kiss, and Bellamy doesn't seem to need an explanation, either.

***

She wakes to Nate talking to his dad over breakfast, and it feels like stepping into a dream; like she was on the Ark, except not on the Ark at all, wanted, and safe, and locked up. 

They have to help her get out of bed, and she tries to be gracious about it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’d think anyone could pile up logs on the fence,” fumes Nate over lunch, “but no. Bellamy has unique fucking skills and special training in mopping floors. They can’t _possibly_ do without him.”

Apparently Johnson puts up a fight, because Raven doesn’t see Bellamy the whole morning, and when she finally does later in the day, both he and Sinclair are in foul moods.

“You’d think anyone could pile up logs on the fence,” fumes Nate over lunch, “but no. Bellamy has unique fucking skills and special training in mopping floors. They can’t _possibly_ do without him.”

Monty rolls his eyes.

“Johnson is on a power trip. What did you expect?”

Well, Raven, at least, didn’t expect this, and she’s annoyed beyond measure. She never cared much for the politics of the Ark, and she has even less patience for it now, when they really have bigger problems than dick measuring and pecking order. Except of course they don’t.

Sinclair shows up in the workshop way before sunset, and his face looks grim as he sets himself to work.

“Council problems?” asks Raven automatically. She doesn’t expect much of an answer, given how close-lipped he usually is, but to her surprise, he drops the device he’s been tinkering with, and starts toweling his hands furiously.

“More like The Hundred problems,” he says bluntly. “ _Apparently_ your people are stirring up trouble.”

Raven never thought of herself as someone who has people, but now the idea doesn’t even give her a stop.

“What kind of trouble?” she asks simply.

“You stick together. They don’t like that.”

There is a moment of silence as Raven slowly takes in his meaning. Her hand is resting idly on the latest version of a simple welding device she’s been working on lately; if she figures it out, they’ll be able to repurpose the scrap metal from the Ark into furniture, so she’s been fighting relentlessly to make it burn hotter and hotter, as hot as she possibly can. It’s a small thing, and Raven to the core, so much that she’d recognize it as hers among a hundred others, but now that she looks at it closely, she can see Sinclair’s mark on it as well, his knowledge and his skill, and endless patience with which he gave her every tiny piece of advice.

Sinclair loves his ship and loves his job, but maybe, just maybe, he loves Raven a little, too.

***

Regardless of Councils, power plays and struggles, Raven still needs a bed for the night, and so she leaves the workshop early to see to that. There are still some spare seats in the wreckage that no one claimed so far, so she set aside two sets of padding earlier in the day, deciding to make a new mattress instead of dragging her cot back and forth through the camp every day.

Besides, her old bed was rubbish anyway.

Bellamy shows up when she’s in the middle of fiddling with the frame, and Raven freezes as soon as she spots him. She wanted to see him today, but on different terms, surrounded by people, and bustle, and noise. Now she can feel the silence deepen between them as he approaches, and she knows he’ll want something, anything, in the way of an explanation she doesn’t really have.

What she doesn’t expect is him asking if she needs a hand.

She stops tying a knot mid-motion, startled into staring, but there is no obvious catch that she can spot; Bellamy’s frame seems relaxed, his smile genuine as he leans slightly to see what she’s using for the mattress. 

“I’m sorry about Johnson,” she tries cautiously. It sounds a bit forced even for her, but it’s as good as she can manage.

Bellamy shakes his head.

“I don’t know what I expected,” he says. “I shouldn’t have gotten Sinclair into trouble.”

“Come on, how much of a trouble can Johnson make?” asks Raven dismissively. She points to Bellamy the twigs she wants him to hold before she resumes tying her knots. “I mean, the man doesn’t know his elbow from his ass.”

“But Abby does.”

Well, Raven sure as hell didn’t think of that.

***

Two days later, Monty gets whisked away to work in medical without as much as a notice, and Nate is expressive enough in voicing his opinion that he gets himself arrested.

It doesn’t really surprise anyone when Bellamy steps in. Raven might hate politics, but it’s not like she doesn’t understand what’s right in front of her: the impatience on Kane’s face when Bellamy asks questions, and annoyance with which he regards the crowd waiting for answers outside; people, _their_ people, being a nuisance yet again.

In case anyone had any doubts about what’s going on, their group gets dismantled over the next few days, even though most of them are still underage, and shouldn’t technically get work assignments. In exchange, they get a few of the previously too precious engineers working trash duty with them, because, apparently, what they’ve been digging up is suddenly too valuable to risk some kids botching a scavenger hunt.

Raven doesn’t even notice when Kyle finishes her welding device for her, and she can’t bring herself to look at him when she thanks him.

(“How’s that figuring yourself out going, Reyes?” he asked her in passing while she was struggling to organize the day’s work without Nate. “I mean, with new boytoy in lockup, things must be hard.”

It took her a moment to fully process his accusation, and he waited, focused on her poignantly; Raven Reyes, a creature of sensation.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she managed eventually, and lifted her gaze to see Kyle give her a sad nod.

“I thought you wouldn’t.”)

***

Nate only spends two days in lockup, and by the time he’s out, his dad has already moved their tent to stand on the empty spot by Monty’s.

Their people catch on quickly, and it’s not like it takes long to carry a few belongings across camp. Bellamy makes a show of helping Harper pack up her tent, and they waltz to the new site in the middle of lunch break, loud and annoying just like old times, with five more people following right behind them.

Good.

Since Nate’s stuff is already in the new place, he helps Raven carry hers, and just for a moment, she feels self-conscious about being seen with him. She shakes it off quickly, though, and picks up her mattress, leaving Nate to deal with the bed frame. 

It’s not like she doesn’t already know what she’s made of.

There is a moment of suspense later in the day; Abby Griffin showing up almost casually, and taking in their new camp with enough surprise that they should possibly be offended.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asks, and her badly veiled anger makes Raven angry, too, rendering her speechless for one second too long.

“Huddling for warmth,” says Bellamy politely from five tents away. “Winter is coming.”

Raven isn’t sure which of them wins the staring contest that proceeds, but it counts for something, at least, that Bellamy doesn’t wait to be dismissed; he picks up a rope, one of Raven’s, and starts tying it to keep her tent in place.

“You can’t do this,” says Abby quietly. “The fifty of you. You can’t act as if you’re a separate state.”

“It’s clearly what you expect us to do.”

This gives Abby a pause, and Raven isn’t entirely sure if she understands the look that passes between her and Bellamy, but she knows she’d be a fool to underestimate it.

Right before nightfall, Octavia nails a sign to a long plank of wood, and sticks it in the middle of their camp with a mischievous smile. It’s a name tag, and Raven expects it to say something obvious, _Camp Delinquent_ or _Camp Dropship_ , but instead all there is is _Aventine_ , a word she doesn’t even recognize, like it was from a language long gone.

Bellamy lets out a howl of laughter when he sees it, and by the time Raven goes to bed, he’s still laughing too hard to explain the pun.

***

She feels better in the morning, stronger and a little more hopeful, the pain no more than a background noise in the bustle of her head. It doesn't even matter that she has to put on almost all the clothes that she owns in order not to freeze; it's a good thing, she thinks in passing, that Monty says this is as cold as it should get.

 

Breakfast looks suspicious, and Raven only agrees to try it when she learns it was Octavia's idea to collect a few rations of meat and cook them into a soup that smells of weird herbs, but is surprisingly delicious, hot and fat; the kind of food that makes you feel like you can actually handle another day of work.

Things are easier with Nate back, and Raven almost feels herself smile a few times as hours pass smoothly. Now that they're mostly done with removing the outermost layers of metal, things are going a lot faster, and for the first time Raven lets herself consider a new project, building huts, or stoves, or vehicles, things people start making when they've decided to stay somewhere for good.

She is whistling to herself as she steps into the workshop and finds Sinclair's note informing her that he's been relocated to Mount Weather, effective immediately.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven is in Bellamy's tent before anyone can stop her, Sinclair's note in her hand like a gun, and she's screaming her head off, angry beyond consolation. In her rage, she forgets to be self-conscious around Bellamy, and it's not his fault she’s like this, and she isn't picking a fight, but this is the only way she can be, harsh and unpleasant; Raven Reyes, a wreck.

Raven is in Bellamy's tent before anyone can stop her, Sinclair's note in her hand like a gun, and she's screaming her head off, angry beyond consolation. In her rage, she forgets to be self-conscious around Bellamy, and it's not his fault she’s like this, and she isn't picking a fight, but this is the only way she can be, harsh and unpleasant; Raven Reyes, a wreck.

Somewhere between the screams, there is a breaking point that leaves her sobbing: rough and ugly sounds that feel like they're coming from her very stomach. When she's finally empty from inside out, she finds herself sitting in Bellamy's lap, her helpless fists curled against his chest like they belonged here.

Which, they don't, but Bellamy doesn't look like he minds.

It's easy to reach out and kiss him, easy to wrap her arms around him and push, push until he opens, his body settling around her comfortably as if he was actually enjoying himself.

Raven is too wiped to be rough, to moan, or scratch, or bite, but there's still a sensation in this that she can follow, Bellamy's large hands moving softly across her back, and his lips nipping at hers playfully. At first she doesn't even register that he's smiling, and she pulls away, surprised, so fast she catches him red-handed.

"Is anything wrong?" he asks immediately, and Raven isn't completely honest when she shakes her head, but it's not like she'd be able to explain anyway.

So she does what she knows best, pulls Bellamy towards his cot and drowns herself in another kiss, not caring that there will be hell to pay for this moment of comfort. She can feel him smile again when she palms him through his pants, but then he breaks the kiss, and his face is strangely serious.

“Moving on?” he asks, his eyes fixed on hers, and Raven is shaking her head again, because he has this all wrong, but she’s never been one for words, and there is nothing she can say to make herself better.

“I don’t want to talk,” she manages eventually, and it sounds cruel even to herself, except Bellamy’s thumb never stops stroking her cheek.

“Too much?” he tries again, and that gets him a furious nod, yes, yes, yes, too much, too much fear and too much pain, and way too much Raven trying to fit into a single tight skin.

“Okay,” he murmurs, satisfied with her response, and then his hands return under her shirt without another word, slow and sure and warm, and Raven arches her back in anticipation, her body tense like a string.

Well, she definitely isn’t hard to read now.

Neither of them has ever had sex when it was too cold to undress, so it gets a little awkward, fumbling hands and endless layers of fabric, until they manage to peel Raven’s pants off of her healthy leg. Bellamy’s hand immediately runs up her bare thigh, and she wants him inside, but she also wants a release, and maybe, just maybe, she’s done thinking about this so damn hard.

She pulls Bellamy’s hand higher up, and he gets the hint. His fingers are spreading her legs apart even as he kneels between them, and there’s that smile again, warm and with no hint of malice, a smile that makes Raven push her hips up trustingly, yes, yes, again, until she cries out and spills, her troubled head opening wide until it’s blissfully empty of any hint of Raven.

She opens her eyes to Bellamy casually palming her bare knee, and it surprises her a little that she doesn’t feel like telling him to wipe off the wet smudge she’s left on his cheek.

***

They talk about important things later that night, about factions, and votes, and the Council, until Raven’s head starts spinning, and she’s assured, once again, how thoroughly she hates this whole mess.

“Elections?” she repeats, incredulous. “You think they’re thinking about _elections_ now?”

“I think they realized that most of our people will be voting in a year or two, and we aren’t exactly their biggest fans. They didn’t want us to vote as a block, and throw our support behind someone from outside their circle.”

There’s something Bellamy isn’t saying, but Raven is good at putting pieces together even if she’s revolted by the subject matter. Johnson, it all started with Johnson, then that thing with Monty and Nate, almost as if…

“You,” she says, stunned. “They think we’ll throw our support behind you.”

Bellamy shrugs.

“With Clarke gone, I seemed like the obvious risk,” he says simply. 

“You make it sound like you were going to set them on fire.”

“Can’t say it didn’t cross my mind.”

***

Later, Bellamy walks her to her tent, and to his credit, he doesn’t even try to kiss her goodnight.

She doesn't see him all day, and doesn't give him a single thought, either. There isn't much left of the Ark, but whatever there is, is delicate, so Raven and Nate have their hands full until sundown. If they keep up their pace, they should be done in two weeks tops, and then they'll be moved somewhere else. Raven can't say she's all too excited about the prospect.

Octavia and Harper set up a common fire in the middle of their camp, and people gather around it slowly, their rations cradled carefully in their freezing hands. Bellamy is already there when Raven shows up with Nate, and he extends a mug of herbal tea in their general direction.

"I talked to Abby," he says, unprompted. 

"The Sinclair thing?" asks Nate curiously. "Let me guess. It wasn't her?"

"Kane."

"But she won't help."

"She says you guys are almost done with the Ark anyway."

It's true enough, of course, but there's something ugly about this truth, small, and cowardly, and so powerful it gives Raven a pause. There's nothing she can do, not about Sinclair and not about the future, so she shakes her head, and tries to focus on here and now.

Even if she has a fleeting thought that maybe Sinclair was happy to go, she does her best to shake it off as well.

She spends the evening with Monty, staring into the flames, and there are things he tells her that she never wanted to hear, things about poison and radiation, paralysis and pain. The Council brought some meds and equipment from Mount Weather, and someone has to organize it; someone with training and a strong stomach, but unimportant enough to get landed with the dirty work.

“It wasn’t us,” she tells him after some time, trying to ignore how hollow it sounds even in her own ears. “Those Reapers… We didn’t do this, Monty.”

“Can you look me in the eye and tell me we wouldn’t?”

***

She feels heavy as she gets up to go to her tent, and when Bellamy stands on her way, she takes it in a stride, her hand automatically going to his shoulder even though she doesn’t try to pull him close.

There’s a moment of hesitation, excuses and questions long stuck in the back of Raven’s dry throat ready to spill out at the slightest provocation. But then something isn’t right, and she makes herself look at him carefully, take in his slouched frame and unfocused eyes; Bellamy, it seems, is blurry around the edges, smooth, and soft, and unimaginably heavy.

She tries to say something, because it seems unfair for him not to know how little she has to give, but it turns out she doesn’t know any good words, and so all she has left is biting her lip like an idiot, “Listen, I don’t...” or “Listen, I can’t…”, until Bellamy interrupts her with a slight smile.

“I’m tired,” he says simply. 

Well, it’s too cold to sleep alone anyway.

***

The metal they stripped from the Ark is amazing, strong and yet unimaginably light. Raven would be a fool, really, if she didn’t take advantage of having so much of it at hand.

She’s alone in the silent workshop now, surrounded only by tools and thoughts. With the wreckage completely dismantled, there is nothing left here that anyone but her could be interested in, and even if they were, it’s not like they have time to spare anyway. But there is one thing still left to do for Raven, and if this place is quiet enough to leave her with way too much room for thinking, then well. Occupational hazard.

This is a practical thing, she tells herself as she puts together a new brace; new material and better hinges, and just a few tweaks to make movement easier; softer straps and stronger clasps, all motivated by nothing but common sense. She’s making a new brace because she needs to; Raven Reyes, a creature of necessity.

It would be politic to do this quietly: just a few evenings in the workshop, all quick and with no fuss, but Raven has scores to settle, and “politic” is such a new word, anyway.

She thinks about leaving her old brace somewhere for Kyle to find, but in the end, she doesn’t feel like she deserves to make such a demonstration.


End file.
